Source
https://www.earthsong.org.nz/resources/documents — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood — Membership Agreement (4 May 2016)
Primary Earthsong governance document — the individual membership contract each Earthsong resident/owner signs, binding them to the community's vision, participation duties, and the consensus "coloured-card" decision process (Appendix A) and Communication Agreements (Appendix B). Distinct from the property-owning Body Corporate and the Earthsong Centre Trust deed. Thesis-context (governance) → shallow ingest: Summary + Key thesis insights, no quantitative feeds. This is the operative Version 4 May 2016 (cl.1.1 states it "replaces the Membership Agreement dated 17 March 2012"); the signature/date line is a blank per-member signing template, but the governing text is final and dated. Read verbatim via pdftotext.
Summary
The Earthsong Membership Agreement (Version 4 May 2016) is the individual contract by which every owner and long-term adult resident of the Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood cohousing community (Ranui, West Auckland; earthsong_ranui) becomes a member, and by which they commit to its vision and its ways of working. It is to be read alongside the Body Corporate Rules (cl.1.2) and replaces the previous Membership Agreement of 17 March 2012 (cl.1.1). The body of the agreement sets out the community’s intention and cohousing basis (with reference to the Vision Statement — a permaculture-based “model of a socially and environmentally sustainable community” — and to McCamant & Durrett’s Creating Cohousing as the defining “Cohousing Book”), who must be a member, the seven-step process for becoming one, the active-participation duties of members, acceptance of past decisions and the dispute-resolution/Communication Agreement, and the terms on which membership ceases or an ex-resident may opt into reduced membership. Two appendices carry the community’s operating machinery: Appendix A — the Group Decision-Making Process (consensus by a six-coloured-card protocol, 25% quorum, with a 75%-majority fallback vote if consensus repeatedly fails), and Appendix B — the Communication Agreements (eight “I”-statement behavioural commitments). It is one of a family of Earthsong governance primaries (alongside the Body Corporate Rules, the Earthsong Centre Trust deed, the MOU, the Statement of Intent and the facilitation guidelines) and is the member-level codification of the consensus/participation culture that an interviewee and a resident described in interview (Interview VI [INT_006], Interview V [INT_005]).
Key thesis insights
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A formalised consensus decision process with a defined non-consensus fallback. Earthsong makes decisions “by the consensus of members” with a 25% quorum, but the agreement is explicit about what happens when consensus fails: an unresolved proposal is sent back to the appropriate focus group, and “if consensus is still not reached after a second meeting, or if the meeting considers that time constraints require and notice is given to all members, then a decision can be made at a subsequent meeting by a 75% majority vote” (Appendix A). This is a concrete NZ worked example for the thesis’s treatment of consensus governance in intentional communities — and importantly a design that anticipates consensus deadlock rather than assuming unanimity, addressing the standard critique that consensus paralyses decision-making. Reopening a settled decision is likewise bounded (an absent member may request a revisit “at the next meeting only”; otherwise decisions “may only be reopened with the prior agreement of 50% of members”). OT_147
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The “coloured-card” protocol as a deliberate voice-equalising mechanism. Every member holds a set of six coloured cards used in two modes. In discussion mode cards are heard in a fixed priority order — Black (an interpersonal difficulty preventing full participation), Red (a process observation), Orange (an acknowledgement), Yellow (a question / need for clarification), Green (providing clarification), Blue (a comment or opinion). In decision-making mode the same colours signal graded support — Green (agree), Blue (neutral / basically for it with slight reservation), Yellow (a question to answer before deciding), Orange (a serious reservation but not willing to block), Red (blocking, and willing to help find a collective solution) — with a proposal passing on a second carding “unless red cards are still being raised” (Appendix A). The document states the design intent directly: “Dominant personalities find it harder to push their ideas through at the expense of less vocal members, and softer-spoken members find it easier to voice their concerns.” A citable, structured governance device — not just a norm — for the thesis’s analysis of how community process design distributes decision-making power. OT_147
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Membership as an enforceable bundle of participation obligations, tied to ownership/residency. The agreement makes membership near-mandatory and effortful: all unit owners must be members whether resident or not (cl.3.1), and all adults resident three months or more must be members (cl.3.2). Becoming a member is a seven-step onboarding — an official tour, meeting a Membership Coordinator and being assigned a “buddy”, reading the Cohousing Book, attending two Full Group meetings as an observer, buying or renting a unit, paying the membership fee, and signing the agreement (cl.3.6). Members then “undertake to actively participate in the day-to-day tasks” — belonging to a focus group, attending full-group meetings, keeping informed via the email list, joining working bees / cooking teams / guardianship roles, responsible facility use, and prompt payment of charges (cl.3.8). This gives the thesis a documented example of how a cohousing community operationalises the “sweat-equity” participation expectation as a written condition of membership, corroborating the Interviewee account that contribution runs on “expectation + invitation + mild peer pressure” (INT_006). OT_147
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Codified communication norms and a dispute-resolution commitment as governance infrastructure. Members “honour and adhere to the Communication Agreement as set out in Appendix B, and commit to a dispute resolution process” (cl.3.10). Appendix B is a set of eight behavioural commitments — using “I” statements and speaking for oneself, speaking succinctly, owning and naming one’s own feelings, respecting others’ right to speak without interruption, respecting privacy by not discussing others’ personal issues outside the group, valuing different contributions and perspectives, dealing with problematic issues directly with the person concerned, and “I recognise that we work best together when we remember to have fun!” This supports the thesis’s argument (echoing an interviewee’s “the hardest part was people dynamics, not finance”, INT_006) that the durable governance challenge in intentional communities is interpersonal, and that mature communities respond by formalising communication and conflict norms — not just decision rules. OT_147
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Graduated exit — the ex-resident “opt-in” reduced membership. Membership normally ceases on leaving, or for an owner on selling their unit (cl.3.11), but the agreement provides a graduated off-ramp: an ex-resident or existing non-resident member “may opt-in upon leaving to a reduced membership for up to 6 months … renewable on request”, which retains all rights and responsibilities of members except (a) decision-making (though still including discussion) and (b) as-of-right use of the common house as an extension of home, with Earthsong able to refuse if responsibilities have not been fulfilled (cl.3.12). A small but telling governance-design detail for the thesis: the community treats membership as a continuum of belonging rather than a binary in/out status, preserving continuity of relationship and knowledge across turnover — relevant to the community-resilience discussion of how intentional communities absorb the ~1–2-household/year turnover an interviewee described (INT_006). OT_147
Research targets
Documents to retrieve
- None. This agreement is one of a companion set of Earthsong governance primaries in the same collection — the Body Corporate Rules (which this agreement is to be read alongside, cl.1.2, and which carry the Vision Statement in their Appendix A, cl.1.5), the Earthsong Centre Trust deed, the MOU, the Statement of Intent, the facilitation guidelines — which are held as their own separate sources, so no new retrieval target is raised for them here.
Research gaps
- None. The document is the complete, final, dated operative agreement (Version 4 May 2016) with both appendices included; nothing material is missing or superseded that would warrant a follow-on target.
Notes
Primary Earthsong governance document, read verbatim via pdftotext -layout (short — the 4-clause-block body plus Appendix A “Group Decision Making Process” and Appendix B “Communication Agreements”, every page footed “Version 4 May 2016”). Downloaded as an authoritative file within the Earthsong document collection (not AI-prepared / not agent-retrieved) → no ## Retrieval provenance block required. context: thesis → shallow treatment: Summary + Key thesis insights, feeds: [cases/earthsong_ranui] (Earthsong case wiring, aligning with the sibling OT_140/OT_141/OT_145 case linkage), no key_claims block (governance text feeds the thesis argument, not the NI calculation layer).
data_quality: verified — this is the final versioned operative agreement, not a draft: cl.1.1 states it “replaces the Membership Agreement dated 17 March 2012”, every page is footed “Version 4 May 2016”, and both referenced appendices are present in full. Every stated provision (25% quorum, six coloured cards, 75%-majority fallback, 50%-to-reopen threshold, 6-month reduced membership, three-month residency trigger, two observer meetings) traces verbatim to the raw. The signature/date line at the foot of the body is blank because this PDF is the per-member signing template, but the governing text itself is complete and final — so, unlike the sibling Earthsong Centre Trust deed (OT_140, a Feb-2004 draft → high), this document has no draft caveat and sits at verified.
Sibling to the other Earthsong primaries in the corpus (Interview V [INT_005], Interview VI [INT_006], OT_078, OT_092, OT_093, OT_094, OT_098, LIT_018) and to the Trust deed, all aggregated by the case page earthsong_ranui.
Connections
Links to
Referenced by
Cases (1): Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood